Page:Notes on the History of Slavery - Moore - 1866.djvu/70

 Militia, an act paed in 1707, Chapter 2, required them to do ervice on the highways and in cleaning the treets, etc., as an equivalent. Thirty-three free negroes were mentioned in the minutes of the Selectmen of Boton, in 1708, to whom, according to this law, two hundred and eighteen days of labor were aigned upon the highways and other public works. Lyman's Report, 1822. The ame act prohibited them to entertain any ervants of their own color in their houes, without permiion of the repective maters or mitrees.

In 1712, an act was paed prohibiting the importation or bringing into the Province any Indian ervants or laves. The preamble recites the bad character of the Indians and other laves, "being of a malicious, urley and revengeful pirit; rude and inolent in their behaviour, and very ungovernable.” A glimpe of poible future reform is to be caught in this act, for it recognizes the increafe of laves as a "dicouragement to the importation of White Chritian Servants." But its chief motive was in the peculiar circumtances of the Province "under the orrowful effects of the Rebellion and Hotilities" of the Indians, and the fact that great numbers of Indian laves were already held in bondage in the Province at the time.

This act had a pecial reference to Southern Indians, the Tucaroras and others, captives in war, chiefly from South Carolina. Governor Dudley afterwards entered into correpondence with other colonial governors, about preventing the ale of Indians from that Province to the Northern colonies. Similar acts were paed by Pennylvania in 1712,